In the early 1970s my husband served in Pohnpei, Micronesia, as a Peace
Corps volunteer. The people were (and still are) very social and visited
each other often. A typical meeting would begin with active discussions
and then, when there were no more words, people would sit together in
silence for hours. It was quite an adjustment for some of us, but now
more than 30 years later, an adjustment that I truly appreciate -- and
long for when the noise of routine living gets a bit too loud.

Many years ago while participating in an Outward Bound program, I spent
three days on a "solo" in the Wyoming desert. Besides not having food
or even a sleeping bag, there was no one to talk to except myself. We
were given three matches and allowed to take our journal and a pen. The
first night I accidentally dropped my pen into my fire.

One dawn I awoke to a tremendous rumbling sound and lifted my head off
the dirt in time to see a couple of deer running close by. Another day
I was disturbed by what sounded like the approach of a a helicopter. It
turned out to be a dragon fly buzzing overhead. Unlike your reentry
after nine days of silence, when my patrol reassembled we all spoke in
whispers--it seemed only natural. But of course we were still in the
wilderness. Out twenty-six days without a base camp, without
electricity or running water, with only one change of clothes, with all
our food and possessions on our back did much to conform us to nature
and not vice-versa.

By that I mean that before my solo, I assumed I would domesticate my
site. When actually confronted with the lone lodgepole pine that served
as my "shelter", I experienced a profound sense of the tree's
preeminence. I stood in awe of it and felt the need to ask permission
to remove its dead, lower branches--to clear a place for rest and shade
for myself and fuel for my fire.

I had a similar experience in Hong Kong in '99. Spent a few days there and
didn't know anyone and didn't really speak any Chinese, of any dialect. So
was silent for the duration of my stay there, as 'smile, point, and nod' was
my mainstay. I fluked out and ended up in business class on my outbound
flight where the very chatty and gregarious flight attendant overwhelmed me
so much that I feigned laryngitis for the duration of the flight whilst I
became accustomed once more to the cacophony as you phrased it. And same
experience as you: found it an alien world.

After my first trip to Mexico from the US when, upon my return, my friends
asked me if I had suffered culture shock, I replied in the affirmative
that it had occurred upon my return, rather than the reverse. This was, as
one might imagine, primarily because of our frenetic, consumer-oriented
lifestyle, which I've never missed when away from it, yet in which I all
too often heartily engage.

I very much enjoy your Word a Day newsletter, especially the glimpses into
your life. Your recent meditative retreat reminded me of a joke:

A young woman entered a cloistered monastery where the nuns could speak two
words only every ten years. At the end of the first ten years, the woman
said to the Mother Superior "Bad food." At the end of the second ten years,
the woman said to the Mother Superior "Hard work." At the end of the third
ten years, the woman said to the Mother Superior "Cold bed." At the end of
the fourth ten years, the woman, not so young, said to the Mother Superior
"I quit." To which the Mother replied, "Well, it's about time, you've done
nothing but bitch since you started."

When I started meditating at home, my roommate's cat would invariably join
me for my morning sit. Settling beside my cushion with one leg in the
air, she would begin a thorough routine of licking, smacking, and chewing
at those parts of her anatomy on which I was least disposed to meditate.

From that experience came the poem, more Ogden Nash than Basho:

The Dharma of the Grooming Cat

The dharma of the grooming cat
is to not let karma accumulat.
She faces beyond a stretch of a doubt
places I retch to think about.
So while my habits harden in clumps,
she sits and licks with the focus of monks.
Oh, how I strive to embrace my waste
with such undiscriminating taste!
But I'll need time and practice,
for, right now, the fact is
When it's crusted too thick--
I don't lick.

Many thanks for the Gandhi quotation. It took me some time to realise that
he was referring to the second stanza of the British national anthem. Some
readers may be interested to know that this knowledge is no longer part of
a standard English education; back in primary school in the 1970s, we were
taught the somewhat innocuous verses 1 and 3 only. I distinctly remember
our headmistress making a comment about "knavish tricks" and how it was
"no longer the done thing" to expose small children to such imperial dogma.
Here is the full, outmoded anthem.

One of my favorite bons mots is "Shake, shake the ketchup bottle/First none
will come, and then a lot'll." No, Ogden Nash was NOT the author of that
immortal couplet, although many people claim he was. (He DID write "Candy /
is dandy / But liquor / is quicker".) The real author's name is revealed
in the February edition of my free e-book.

For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change. -Ingrid
Bengis, writer and teacher (1944- )